NCIS, gayness levels, and The Gay Spike

[cimorene]

Damn, the new NCIS was good. And not only good, either - I mean, it was partly good acting, and it was partly better writing than usual, because it was really sparkling, and Michael whassname is really good at - you know, impressions, and being a bit of a goof, and comic timing - so I'm sure they wrote the ep for him, just to let him shine, as it were. But anyway, my point is that it wasn't just better written than usual, it was more gay than usual. Like, okay. In graph form,



NCIS is usually about as gay as Highlander, which is to say, amusingly gay, but not necessarily anything that your typical non-gay, non-slash-goggles-wearer would even pick up on; the realm of repeated humourous subtext, but without the intense focus on interpersonal relations, in a bromance way, that you find in Star Trek and the other higher-up shows on the graph (there are plenty of other shows, too, obviously, I just picked big fandoms that spring immediately to mind as benchmarks). It spikes occasionally, especially in s6, with Agent Afloat and Tony's return to the job WITH BONUS EYEFUCKING AND HANDSHAKES, not to mention the Meet The Parents ep where Gibbs's dad is all over Tony and then inexplicably (or rather, unexplainedly) gives him a sweater., but those spikes have heretofore, due to characterisation and camerawork (ie no lovingly lingering shots of the eyefucking, more like you have to notice it happening is a comic aside when the plot is focussed elsewhere), been still mostly at sub-Star Trek levels. Last night's episode was firmly up above Star Trek gayness levels, although still under Due South (it's hard to get as gay as riding off into the sunset together) - more like The Sentinel (other shows at TS's level of gayness: Merlin, Starsky & Hutch from what I have observed).

I keep refreshing my delicious subscriptions looking for episode tags because I'm too lazy to try to write one myself, but you could totally put a really awesome Gibbs/Dinozzo FT fic either directly after the events of the ep, or shortly after like a few days or weeks. Even though my personal canon places that earlier this season.

ETA: If you haven't seen it, go participate in thefourthvine's Scientific Poll on the subject!http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/98874.html#cutid1 & http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/99145.html#cutid1

Comments

[kmazzy.livejournal.com]

now i want more things on this graph!!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Feel free to make your own!

[kmazzy.livejournal.com]

i don't know enough to do that! i would put supernatural somewhere near the sentinel though.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hahahha, so would I! Except I don't find it very gay. I mean, it's an intense bromance but it's clearly a BROmance. All homoerotica completely unintentional (and I generally find, unnecessary: it goes away for me if I blink and remember they're brothers...)

[kmazzy.livejournal.com]

it's gayer in my mind than in the actual show...

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Bromance makes me wonder: how gay is Scrubs?

...now I need to go youtube "Guy Love". 'scuse.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I saw this and couldn't resist making my own (http://melannen.katycat.net/slashgraph.png)! I hope you don't mind. This is genius!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

No, it's no-rights-reserved!

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

You know what's interesting about your one? The plot points follow a roughly U shape. So what I'm seeing there is that the slashy shows are either brilliantly written or horribly written, but that the shows with merely average writing just aren't usually that slashy. Hmm.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I saw that too. But I'm not sure if it's a real effect, or just that when shows are THAT SLASHY I have trouble being objective about the writing!

(It may come down to - if the slashy relationships are well done, I rated the slash high, and if the slashy relationships are deeply, deeply over-the-top and campy, I rated the slash high, but shows where I was so-so on the writing, I was so-so on the relationships too.)

[brownbetty]

Maybe the slash factor tends to dispose one to have a higher opinion of the writing, unless the writing is really really really bad, in which case there's no denying it.

[brownbetty]

I've never seen Sentinel, but I cannot believe the writing level was worse than on Merlin! Is this possible?

Now I want to see it.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I've only seen about an episode of each! But my reasoning goes like this: in Merlin fic, people use actual (non-slash-related) plot points in episodes; they write about one-episode guest stars; they write what are essentially "casefile" fics. As far as I can tell, nobody ever does that in Sentinel - they just seem to write relationship-focused stuff, to the point that I couldn't tell you a single plot point from any Sentinel episode that doesn't bear directly on Jim & Blair's big gay love. Whereas I could probably give you a pretty good summary of all of Merlin so far. (Though this may just be because Merlin doesn't *have* plot points that aren't about big gay love.) So Merlin's writing must have something going for it that Sentinel's doesn't.

(Also, I think I'm more forgiving than a lot of people of the way Merlin-BBC relates to the mythos. Compared to some of the stuff I read the last time I was in King Arthur fandom, the Slash Dragon is a nuanced and accurate interpretation of the original story.)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hell, yes. I say this from the POV of 3 eps of TS and about 1½ of Merlin.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

wax_jism, who has actually watched most of both, backs me up with YES IT REALLY REALLY REALLY IS. She says that in Merlin, part of it is that they're being silly on purpose and just having fun. The Sentinel's badness is entirely down to actually being that bad.

[apatheia-jane.livejournal.com]

When I heard of the graph concept, I immediately thought of BL as belonging top right.

I would very much argue with your placement of Xena as having better quality writing than Torchwood.

And X-files being better written than BSG. OMG season 8, Chris Carter why did you hate us so much?